Yesterday – on the way to my Silvester dinner – I took the M41 bus on Sonnenallee; it was around ten in the evening, and the bus was attacked by the bombs. I sat in the back on one of those four-seater-edges, in front of me a girl about 16 years old in preppy H&M clothes. Next to her sat a woman in her mid-fourties holding hands with a guy of the same age. The couple couldn’t be ignored. The iroquois haircuts and their leatherjackets made them look like idols of aged, persuasive Dead-Kennedys-groupies. I somehow figured that the three were connected, more than that, I thought the woman (the guy didn’t say a word) was the mother of the preppy H&M-girl. Proudly wearing her “Legal-Illegal-Scheißegal”-patch, the Mercedes stars on the sides of her leatherjacket and some neat facial tattoos, the Punk-mum told her daughter: “Finally a Silvester with the both of us together in the city. It’s good you’re out of that village for this time of the year. This place has no substance. I mean, seriously, what do you wanna do all day surrounded by those bourgeois pricks?” The daughter seemed kind of indifferent, looking at her smartphone. Then she said: “Yeah, mum. Oh hey, look at this: About 70 journalists have been killed that year. That’s a lot, don’t you think?” – “True”, said the Punk-Mum, “but don’t believe what officials say. We’ve just seen it in Hamburg, you know, the officials don’t give a shit about those people’s motivation.” A minute passes, the Punk-mum gets a bit serious in her face, takes the H&M-girl by her hand and says, with honest eyes: “You know, I’m really happy you’re here this year. Really happy.” – “Me too, mum.” The daughter smiles back: “You know, last month I wasn’t sure how to justify coloring my hair, now I feel good about it.” One can find all this banal, but I found the whole situation quite moving. Without having any background about this family (of course I pretended not to listen), it seemed like an argument against this proclaimed lack of futurity (of that no-future-generation) of the eighties. Arriving at my Silvester dinner, a guy in his fourties holding a vibrating babyphone next to his Cordon Bleu asked me: “Tell me, why do the kids of Neukölln throw bombs all the time. Such a ridiculous ritual. What’s their motive behind it?”. As if I could explain. Well, let’s just add that he was the first to put his babyphone to the side and light a rocket when it turned twelve. So much about futurity.